Drug and Alcohol Addiction Treatment Centers In Nebraska

Nebraska is a midwestern state that includes the prairies of the Great Plains and has a rich American pioneering history. Home only to 1.9 million people, with one of the least dense populations in the nation, only 33 percent of residents live in Omaha or the capital city of Lincoln, while 89 percent of Nebraskans are at home in communities of fewer than three thousand people.

Substance Abuse in Nebraska

Nebraska's epidemiological profile reports that alcohol use in the state has consistently hovered above the national average, while cigarette smoking and abuse of most drugs remained on par with national averages. The profile also reports that nearly half (41 percent) of all 2014 probation sentences were for DUI charges, while 11.2 percent of sentencing was for an illicit drug–related crime.

Despite the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) reports in 2015, where the opioid prescribing rate was 72.8 per 100 people, the opioid overdose death rate for Nebraska in 2016 was more than ten times less than the national average. Although opioids and heroin abuse are common in the state, there is no public health emergency surrounding opioids in Nebraska.

Addiction treatment data from the 2016 Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration's (SAMHSA’s) Treatment Episode Data Set (TEDS) shows that alcohol was by far the most common primary substance of abuse among Nebraska treatment admissions for the year. In 2014, alcohol was the most common primary drug of abuse for addiction treatment admissions at 62 percent, followed by meth at 14 percent, marijuana at 10 percent, and opioids or heroin being less common at 5 percent. Continuing the trend from 2014, of nearly 16,500 treatment admissions, more than 10,000 were for alcohol, followed by 2,668 for methamphetamine, and 1,628 for marijuana.